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The FermentedlyChallenged blog has been retired since the end of October 2016. It has been a great 9 year run. Thanks to all the readers and brewery staff for all your support in the past. I'm living in the Denver metro area and working in the Cable TV industry now. Cheers and enjoy beer responsibly. Follow along on social media - @ChipperDave on Twitter and on Facebook.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Olde Town Arvada is a hidden gem. A few connecting streets with dozens of small intimate shops, most all recently renovated is pleasing to the eye and has many inviting places to visit including the Arvada Beer Company. Cary and Kelly Floyd opened their dream business back in October 2011 and since then it's been full speed ahead to keep up with their beer production for thirsty customers.

I arranged to head down to Arvada Beer Company (ABC) to meet up with both the Floyds, one of my family and also with the guys from the Colorado Craft Beer Show for their monthly remote live radio broadcast from the brewery. The owners, Cary & Kelly Floyd were kind enough to show me around the brewery and gave me the tour of their brewhouse and storage rooms. The brewery is located in the heart of Historic Olde Town Arvada and has been open since October 28th of 2011.

ABC has a 7-barrel brewhouse with an over-sized mash tun that can handle slightly bigger batches. Add to that they had 4 big fermenters - 1 15-barrel and 3 7-barrel stainless steal units. The brewhouse room did have more room to expand and Cary Floyd told me that they were planning to add 3 new 15-bbl fermenters to the room in the near future. Downstairs in the basement, they keep a big row of brite tanks connected to the glycol chilled lines running up to the taps. Add to that a big walk in cooler where they keep all of their kegs. I even spotted a few wine barrels filled with some upcoming brews. Look for an imperial stout coming out in a couple weeks and from that a couple barrels will be filled with that for tapping on their 1st Anniversary party coming in October.I had an hour to kill before sitting down on the radio show so I took the opportunity to try some of the beers at Arvada Beer Company. ABC keeps several regular beers on tap as well as several seasonals and special brews. Some of the regular beers included: Water Tower Wheat, Goldline IPA, Ralston's Golden Ale, Flanigan's Irish Red, Barth Berry Blast, and Pool Hall Porter. Today's special brews were: Manneken Golden Strong, Lemon Shandy, BLR Butter Pecan Brown, and the Goldline IPA on Nitro tap. I opted for a glass of their Flanigan's Irish Red first, followed by their Goldline IPA on Nitro next. (Wow on both of them! 3/5 stars for the Red and 4/5 stars for the Nitro IPA. So good).

One of the nice features of this business is their connectedness (literally) to the Manneken Frites food shop next door. They have a hallway that connects the two businesses together. You can wander over and order and they will bring it to your table inside the brewery! That was awesome. Beer, Belgian frites and a spicy polish sausage - yum! Also just down the block is a Winery where Arvada Beer Company is getting some barrels from and a guitar shop where people stop in to play all day long.

An hour into the Colorado Craft Beer Show (AM 760 Denver - Saturdays 12pm to 2pm) I was invited to sit down and chat with hosts Chris "The Gubna" Katechis from Oskar Blues and John Turk, as well as the ABC owner Cary Floyd and talk craft beer and Colorado beer news for about 10-15 minutes.

During the radio show, we poured some beers and sampled them. They included not only some great Arvada Beer Company beers, but also beers from Crabtree Brewing (Menage a Trois - braggot), Grimm Brothers Brewhouse (The Count Imperial Stout) and Bristol Brewing Company (Imperial IPA and RyePA). The radio show has done a live show there once a month (last Saturday of the month) for the last 6 months and hopes to continue doing their show there on a monthly basis. They hand out free giveaways with ticket draws for anyone who buys a beer during the show.

Other guests on the show included David Boone from Bristol Brewing Company, and Nicol Winkler and Adam Lenfest - event organizers. I also managed to talk with Bill Eye (The Beer Guy) from Prost Brewing and Arvada Beer Company brewer Dennis O'Harrow, both great guys who are highly knowledgeable about brewing, who were also watching in the audience. I could have spent hours with those guys.

Arvada Beer Company is doing all it can to keep up with demand for their handcrafted beers. Along with their upcoming fermenter tank farm expansion, they plan to get more into barrel aging beers and even plan to do some sour ales in the future. One planned beer will include blending lactobacillus and cherries and aging the beer for at least 6 months. Some other upcoming beers include: Floyd's ESB on August 3rd, and Nikolai Imperial Stout on August 12th. They even make their own Root Beer for the kids - FREE for 12 and under.

This article came from FermentedlyChallenged.com - a Colorado beer blog.
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